Identification of common traits in improved xylose-growing Saccharomyces cerevisiae for inverse metabolic engineering

Four recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains with enhanced xylose growth (TMB3400, C1, C5 and BH42) were compared with two control strains (TMB3399, TMB3001) through genome-wide transcription analysis in order to identify novel targets for inverse metabolic engineering. A subset of 13 genes with changed expression levels in all improved strains was selected for further analysis. Thirteen validation strains and two reference strains were constructed to investigate the effect of overexpressing or deleting these genes in xylose-utilizing S. cerevisiae. Improved aerobic growth rates on xylose were observed in five cases. The strains overexpressing SOL3 and TAL1 grew 19% and 24% faster than their reference strain, and the strains carrying deletions of YLR042C, MNI1 or RPA49 grew 173%, 62% and 90% faster than their reference strain. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.